ON a trip back to Swansea from Port Talbot the other night I drove past Aberavon beach to witness a magnificent blood-red, cloud-dappled sunset featuring silhouettes of diving gulls, yachts, ore tankers and Mumbles Head in the distance.

It reminded me of some of the long hot summers of my teenage years in Port Talbot... Bowie, Bolan, the beachfront bierkellar and later the dreaded disco era in the Aberavon Hotel.

I say dreaded because at one point, Port Talbot DJs discovered ultra violet lighting as a dance floor effect.

It was fine for a while, like being shot at by a dalek or something from a cardboard boulder era Star Trek episode.

But then someone realised that on dark velvet jackets which people like me were wearing (with lapels that needed landing permission) the UV rays lit up dandruff like a million shining stars.

Teenage boys, including myself, bolted from stunned dancing partners like frightened zebras. The toilet became packed with long-haired, platform-sole-wearing, would-be Casanovas desperately brushing off dandruff for all they were worth.

Thankfully, Head & Shoulders would soon be advertised on TV.

My first memories of the beach are alighting from a blue Thomas Brothers bus with my mother holding me firmly by the hand to stop me racing dangerously for the toffee apple and candy floss kiosks.

It’s curious what goes through the young mind but being brought up in the TV age which included a diet of American shows, although I was living in one of Britain’s most industrial towns, I believed I was growing up in America.

The beach was packed with young mothers and their children while across the sands in either direction, their fathers toiled either at the steel works, the docks or the BP plants at Baglan Bay or Llandarcy.

The town may have been looked down on by passers-by for its smokey, dusty looks but it meant everyone had a job, the pubs and clubs were packed and children like me had ice creams, candy floss, toffee apples and sweets on a seafront made to look like Art-Deco Miami Beach.

On trips to Swansea to stock up my grandmother’s confectionery shop my delusion was cemented because in my mind the wide open carriageways of Fabian Way leading to the old Weaver’s Mill in Swansea looked like something out of the New York waterfront I’d seen on US gangster movies.